


Serving Spriggans Dungeonwide

by Nomad (nomadicwriter)



Category: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21700528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomadicwriter/pseuds/Nomad
Summary: The Spriggan Bakery Network: purveyors of the dungeon's finest vegetarian menu.  Our staff are always happy to help!Apart from Earl.  We're a bit worried about Earl.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Serving Spriggans Dungeonwide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalirush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalirush/gifts).



Thanks for coming, Irma. Really appreciate you minding the bakery for me while I'm gone. Should be fairly routine - you don't get many adventurers make it down here to fourteenth, thankfully. The elves'll probably swing by later: they're building a ghost vault over the other side of the level. They're devils for those breadcakes, so make sure you don't run low.

I tell you, I don't know how we managed before they came up with those runes to seal the doors. Remember when you used to have wandering ghosts roaming free all over the dungeon? Really thinned the herd of customers, and if someone got killed right on your doorstep, you were stuffed. Only trouble is, now they're all safely walled up the bloody adventurers keep making it deeper. I tell you, they're an absolute menace to the expansion efforts. We've been trying to get a branch going up by the Ecumenical Temple for years, but you can't even get the staff trained up nowadays before some idiot shows up to crack them over the head with a mace. And for what? A couple of bread rations? It's not like most of them live long enough to eat the stuff.

Still, that's the way of the world, isn't it? Wouldn't need all these guards for the Orb if we didn't have a steady stream of bloodthirsty savages rampaging through the dungeon after it. And then who's going to keep the bakery in business? There's still the mines, I suppose, but Fedhas knows you can't get an orc to look at a vegetarian option for love nor money, and let's not even talk about ogres.

But we're definitely running short on experienced staff. Did you hear about poor Algy? Strangled by an octopode, of all the Zin-damned things. I don't know where the rubbery buggers keep on coming from - you don't even see their kind in the Shoals. We've had almost no luck keeping bakery branches going in the upper floors.

That's why we've been trying to make more of a go of the farm network. We've reached out to the merfolk eel farms, and there's a human fella up on twelfth keeps hogs and yaks. He's agreed to keep us in yak cheese in return for a supply of bread rations and some of the honey we get from the Lair. The hornet-riders bring it up from the beehives for us, the mad buggers. I hear some of them are so used to getting stung they don't even bother drinking potions of resistance any more.

You won't have to deal with that mob, anyway: the delivery just came in yesterday. Lad who brought it up didn't half talk my ear off - they're switching them over from blowguns to these new-fangled darts, apparently, and it's all a big to-do about retraining and how they've got to learn stealth tactics now. I say, well, my lad, you probably should have thought of that before you decided to go into battle on the back of a giant wasp. I tell you, you wouldn't get me up on one of those things if the Royal Jelly itself were after me.

Anyway, I'm a mite concerned about some things that this lad had to say about the other bakery branches. Apparently Mildred - she's the new girl that took over from Algy - wasn't there when he stopped by on tenth. And as for Earl... well, you know Earl. He's always been a tad peculiar. Fedhas knows that I'm not prejudiced, got a berserker nephew who runs around burning spellbooks in the name of Trog, but whoever heard of a spriggan converting to Yredelemnul? It just doesn't seem right.

Fair play to him, though, he's kept the branch on ninth going for all this time when no one else can last up there for long. Far too many disappearances around the mid levels - either the adventurers are getting better, or there's something else up there developed a taste for spriggan. Could be something nasty lurking round the lair, I fear; you get Komodo dragons in the grass by the entrance, and Fedhas knows they can be mean buggers.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, Earl. Well, he always was a strange one, even when he was a lad. I blame it on that night he spent off in the ossuary. Claimed that he was hiding from a minotaur, but sometimes I do wonder, I confess. His uncle told me he begged his parents for a book of cantrips from the travelling bazaar, which of course they thought nothing of at the time - apportation, dead useful spell, use it all the time to get things down from the shelves - but then they found him animating jackal skeletons.

I mean, there's nothing _wrong_ with it, of course. Fedhas knows the adventurers leave enough corpses littered around the place, and a spriggan can always use a bit of extra protection. But it's all a bit, well, gory, isn't it? What are you going to do with all the butchered meat, I have to wonder - just leave it to rot? Turns my stomach thinking about it.

And if you believe rumours, then it could be worse than that. This lad who delivered the honey swears to me that it smelled like Earl had been _cooking_ meat there in the bakery.

Now, I don't want to put too much stock in the words of a flighty young rider, mind - they're all high on mephitic fumes most of the time, if half the stories I hear are true. But still, it's my reputation on the line with the bakery chain, and we've had our concerns about Earl for a while now. If he's making money on the side selling meat pies to orcs... well, bad enough to think of a spriggan handling meat at all, but where's he baking them? That's my worry. If there's been meat cooked in the bread oven, the scandal doesn't bear thinking about.

Still, I doubt it's anything as bad as that. Most likely it's all a wild flight of fancy on the delivery boy's part, but since I'm off upstairs to check on Mildred anyway, I might as well swing by Earl's branch for a surprise inspection. If it turns out he's been burning incense to Yredelemnul in there or somesuch, then I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my foot down. Long-term employee or no, you've got to have some standards, haven't you?

So, thanks again for minding the bakery, Irma. I shouldn't be gone long, though if I have to have words with Earl things might get a little tense. He's got a surly attitude at times, but we can't just let him run riot up there. He'll have to learn he can't just operate as a loner.

And if I open that oven to find anything but bread, I can guarantee you someone's head will roll.


End file.
